To encounter a mystery seconds after entering a fortress, one had to wonder what Sylace had done to anger Lady Luck to such a degree.
His unusually bright blue eyes examined the foe with a mix of fear and cold bloodlust. He knew more about the boogeyman than it did about him, he had the advantage.
His silver blade gleamed under the torches' illumination, a threat daring the now visible boogeyman to attack.
The creature was a patchwork of skin and cloth, stuck together by hastily done stitches. In contrast, the stitches on its lips were tightly sealed, as if its creator's only thought was stopping the boogeyman from speaking.
The creature struck first, letting out a muffled cry before throwing itself at Hadrian.
Slash!
Hadrian's blade tore through the patchwork of flesh. He repositioned himself, expecting a counterattack, but to his surprise the boogeyman fell to the ground.
Dead.
He looked at Sylace with obvious confusion.
His captain offered no answer, only pointing at his still stitched lips.
[If it really was dead, we'd know for sure. Or at least that's what the Encodum said.]
"Stay on guard." His lips parted and the words flew out.
"The stitches are gone!" Gairon let out, raising his blade higher in confusion.
"It would seem so..." Sylace swung his blade a few times to check for invisible foes. "We'll advance slowly. Geiron, Adrien, stay on guard."
The air seemed to be buzzing, tickling at the back of Sylace's neck as if trying to call for his attention.
"Captain... That's not my name."
Those words held unexpected weight, hammering into Sylace's skull with a headache inducing echo. For a moment, his eyes went blank. Sylace was known for his close-to-perfect memory, it was impossible he had forgotten the name of his own platoon mates.
Then how?
"Let's keep exploring." The lieutenant lifted his sword and continued forward with caution.
The five slowly made their way through the ashen plains without much difficult, skillfully avoiding any encounter that seemed too dangerous.
The creatures of the hellish landscape were drastically different from the Revenants and Sanguinis of the outside world. They were much more horrific, much more bloodthirsty.
The most frightening one they had encountered was a simple rabbit with crimson eyes. It has turned out to be a gruesome battle but they managed to escape with their lives
Once the dead sun had set, giving way to a starlit sky, the platoon rested under a pale-grey tree.
"Elis!" Sylace called.
There was no answer.
Suddenly, the world felt fake. It felt as if every thing Sylace had gone through, the pain and hours of preparation, were for nothing. His ears rung as the weight of his first mistake fell on his shoulders.
His thoughts flashed back to the Encodum, to the pages related to the boogeyman. A piece of his memories has been shrouded in fog by an unknown force upon entering the fortress, making him forgetful and careless.
It was clear now, he had forgotten Gairon and Hadrian's names, he had forgotten to check his men, and he had forgotten the boogeyman's true nature.
The creature didn't only possess the ability to silence others and turn invisible. It's abilities revolved around deceit and deception. This included illusions, appearance manipulation, and memory manipulation, an ability it had enjoyed the pleasure of using on Sylace.
The vice-lieutenant finally understood the true horror of a fortress.
Unfortunately, he was to late.
Gairon, Hadrian, Daemon, and Jayson all rose in alarm seeing their leader's distress
"What's wrong?", The red-haired Gairon asked while kicking soil into the fire that had kept them warm, it's light a much bigger threat than the cold.
Sylace gestured for the men to remain silent, no one except him seemed to notice Elis' absence.
[There's no doubt about it, this is the work of a boogeyman.] The thoughts flashed through Sylace's mind as more of his altered memories became clear.
A boogeyman's manipulation was only effective until the victim was aware of it...
Though they prefer trickery and illusions, a boogeyman's strength and speed are not to be underestimated...
Like all mysteries, no boogeymen have fallen to the hand of man since the First, Bless His Heart, thus the implications and possible consequences of such an action are unknown. Fortunately, the Old Texts provide some insight into a possible outcome:
"What is to be done to he who murders a man of straw and string? The law of man declare him innocent, as straw and string hold no grudges, but the law of the land claims otherwise. He who murders those of Zagreus will find themselves changed, no longer man yet not quite beast. A horror dancing on the line between rationality and madness..."
Sylace had at the time failed to find meaning in the words of the Old Text.
Even now, blade tightly clenched in hands, the meaning eluded him.
He gazed around cautiously, on guard for any form of movement.
"It's here..."
Gairon and Hadrian didn't know what 'it' referred to but they were already on guard.
Spplsh!
The battle had started, it's beginning indicated by a patchy beige hand stabbing through Hadrian's side.
The blonde haired man was saved only by the boogeyman's sadistic nature. He had been labeled a prey and it intended on 'hunting' him for as long as possible.
"AAAHHH!" Hadrian's scream seemed even louder in the dead-quiet atmosphere of the Zagreus Fortress as he fell to his knees. There were no birds to ruffle the trees or animals to scurry into the bushes, only horrors that Sylace felt being draw to the commotion.
Slash! Sylace and Gairon both charged towards the creature, determined to kill it before anything else arrived.
Clink! Their blades collided against the boogeyman's iron-hard skin, making a sound like steel on steel.
The two men didn't retreat, instead using a barrage of slashes to push back the creature.
Daemon, who had not been standing idly by, gazed at the battle with a mix of fear and admiration. His platoon mates were much braver than he was.
[Stop that, that's not what matters right now.] The bear-looking man reigned in his thoughts while clenching the fire starter in his hands.
His theory didn't have much behind it besides the stories he'd heard as a kid, but it was worth a shot.
He lit the man-sized column of wood he has been stacking up and screamed: "LIEUTENANT! GAIRON!"
The two knights felt the fire before they saw it, a sharp contrast with the fortress' natural uncomfortable chill.
Gairon had extinguished their campfire so as to not draw the attention of any unwanted visitors, but it was useless now that they were already heading towards the commotion.
The knights began to pushed the boogeyman, whose speed and durability continued to impress them, into the flame with a barrage of attacks.
The creature didn't burn as it should've instead disappearing in a puff of grey dust.
[An illusion!]
Sylace's head immediately turned to the still kneeling Hadrian.
The boogeyman had already picked it's prey. As long as it took care of it, it would be satisfied.
The creature appeared before Hadrian and grabbed him by the hair, it's bead-black eyes staring into his almond-brown ones.
He had been forced into an illusion.
Sylace should've been devastated, he should've been mournful for his friend who had essentially been sentenced to death.
But instead, he smiled.
His smile grew wider and wider as he bent over and began to laugh hysterically.
This time, the boogeyman had been the one to make a mistake.
Out of the five men present, Hadrian was the worse possible prey for a creature that relied on illusions.
As he was one of the few people in the Zegrow Kingdom immune to them.
Sensory, audible, and visual illusion were useless against him.
It was also the reason why he was the most comfortable when handling revenants.
Hadrian's adoptive mother, Delores Charming, was a revenant.
She was an old lady that had died without having any children despite her longing for one.
When she returned to Zegrow in her ghostly state, she found Hadrian alone in an alley and decided to raise him as her own.
The old lady was only an ordinary revenant so the protection she could extend to her son were limited to being immune to illusions that directly affected him. Discrete forms of deception like memory manipulation, and invisibility were still very effective against him.
SCRRHHHH! A screech tore through the air as Hadrian drove his blade backwards.
Being of the captain rank, he too had read the Encodum, though not as diligently as Sylace.
In his injured state, a single phrase from the long leather-bound encyclopedia had flashed into his mind.
Boogeymen loved to kill from behind...
Blood shot out and covered both Hadrian and the soil around him.
The boogeyman, whose heart had been pierced, fell to the ground.
Dead.
Despite this, the atmosphere remained tense. Sylace and Gairon gripped their swords while keeping the non-fighters, Daemon and Jayson, behind them.
Hadrian turned to them, his usually brown eyes now a bead-black color identical to the boogeyman's.